Kanthapura: Section 18 Summary & Analysis

After three days spent repairing and cleaning the village, as the men begin to return home, the villagers see cars heading up the Bebbur Mound “like a marriage procession.” They see Europeans marching “pariah-looking people” out, but something seems wrong, and Rachi brings the other women to Ratna, “for she is our chief now.”

A drummer beats in the Temple Square, declaring “something about the supreme Government and the no-taxer and the rebels” before naming various fields around the village, even Rangè Gowda’s big field. Suddenly, the villagers realize what is happening and begin to weep. Achakka and the women meet Satamma, who blames Moorthy for “all this misery” and at first refuses to follow them to Ratna, but eventually gives in and joins.

They go to Sami’s house, where Ratna is staying, and find about a dozen other villagers looking at a door behind which “the Mahatma’s boys” are speaking. The women feel relieved, since Moorthy promised that “city people” would come help them, and more people come to join them at Sami’s house.

The door opens, and Ratna is behind it along with many of the men who had been arrested and a number of city boys, one of whom addresses the audience and explains that hundreds of Volunteers will come from the city to save the village’s lands, “for the Government is afraid of us.” In Karwar, he explains, all public services have stopped and “every white man” has a policeman for personal protection as Gandhians have taken over and refuse to stop even when millions are beaten and thrown in jail. They only buy khadi cloth and the money in circulation ends up with the Congress, not the government. Gandhians conquered the northern city of Peshawar, he continues, even though hundreds were shot, and eventually the soldiers stopped shooting them altogether because they came to understand their purpose. He believes that Gandhians’ love will even convert these soldiers, and the whole group takes a moment for silent prayer.

During the prayers, the women see more and more cars drive through town and suddenly they blurt out, “no, no—this will not do, this will not do.” Ratna assures them that the Congress will take care of them, but the women cannot bring themselves to abandon their lands and homes “and the sacred banks of the Himavathy.”

Ratna had already left, and everyone returns home in frustration as Achakka wonders whether Gandhism has helped them at all. She declares that they were “mad to follow Moorthy.” The goddess Kenchamma and river Himavathy never refused their prayers, she laments. But suddenly she feels “some strange fever” inside her and has a change of heart. Achakka begs forgiveness from Moorthy, Gandhi, and Kenchamma, and declares that the women will do their pilgrimage “to the end.”

The Gandhians block the police’s view of the courtyard with two carts and plan their Satyagraha march. Someone runs into the courtyard and says that women  have arrived for the land auction, and Timmamma sees that they are women from their own village, including Kamalamma and Venkatalakshamma and Lakshamma. Ratna hopes that they want to buy out Bhatta’s lands. They have trouble discerning who is coming and return to their preparations as pariah women shriek and shriek around the valley.

The police and protestors continue to clash in town, and the Gandhians see Sankar come to the door with a number of city boys in tow. He asks if everything is ready but reveals neither his motives nor who will blow the conch to start their protest. That evening, they hear more commotion in the town and look out to see “pariah-looking men” spread to all the village’s fields and the Europeans’ cars drive off. They bring out “big, strong gas-lights of the city” and illuminate the fields around the village; when he sees them, Sankar shouts at Ratna to blow the conch.

The Gandhians immediately begin to march, chanting and singing as the policemen file into town with their lathis raised. But they are singing a religious song and chanting “Satyanarayan Maharaj ki jai!” They tell the police officers they do not know where they are going, but soon the villagers’ cries turn back to “Vandè Mataram!” and “Mahatma Gandhi ki jai!” as the city boys come out to join them in the streets and march with them in the direction of the barricades outside the Skeffington Estate.

The police beat the marchers once again with their lathis, but at the village gate one Gandhian raises “the flag of the Revolution,” singing it and passing it around the protestors as the police try to seize it. The police begin throwing stones at the crowd but are outnumbered by protestors.

The protestors approach the Skeffington Estate’s guarded barricades and see the city coolies continue their labor. The police throw one woman on a cactus and run the others down to the canal and then into its waters. From afar, the village women see dozens of new soldiers approaching with rifles and bayonets. They hide amidst the season’s harvests as one soldier fires a warning shot and then a deafening silence falls.

From their vantage point above the village, the women see the soldiers surround the city boys and demand that they must lower the flag or else will be shot. When the boys insist that their protest is nonviolent, the police say that this does not allow them to march into the fields. Those are their fields, protest the villagers, for “it’s we who have put the plough to the earth and fed her with water,” but the soldiers shoo them off and threaten again to shoot.

Ratna drives the protestors forward and they all hear a volley of shots and close their eyes, only to quickly realize that these were more warning shots. Afraid, the villagers hide in Bhatta’s sugarcane fields. They see the city coolies begin to cut their harvest as the crowd approaches them, chanting. They see the Skeffington coolies marching a flag down from the Estate to the barricades.

Suddenly, the city coolies in Kanthapura shut off all the lights. The villagers see the police start to beat the Skeffington coolies at the barricade, then fire warning shots and finally shoot one of the coolies. Astonished, the other three thousand coolies leap over the barricades and rush towards the top of the hill where the police stand and begin to open fire.

After “a long tilting silence,” the women decide to join the coolies, and Nanjamma stays to watch the children. Achakka goes and sees bullets flying every which way, until one strikes one of the Volunteers with her. A protestor from the city bandages the injured woman and carries her to the Congress ambulance. The others hear the yells of the wounded and, from the front of the march, a song—“O, lift the flag high, / Lift the flag high, / This is the flag of the Revolution.”

The city coolies give up the harvest and join in the protests, telling the women “Gandhi Mahatma ki jai!” even though they otherwise do not understand one another. They look for the Skeffington coolies but do not see them, although an enormous crowd of coolies and women comes from the river bend. The soldiers fire and charge at the protestors, trampling them, waving around their bayonets, and hitting them with their rifle butts.

Sometime later, the women wake, and a Gandhian immediately gets shot near them and falls over them, dead. In the big field, Achakka wonders where all her fellow Volunteers have gone. She looks up over the fields and sees her village, completely empty: “there seems to be not a beating pulse in all Kanthapura.” She hears the British soldiers plan their next attack.

The attack starts “not from their side but ours,” since one of the Gandhians broke open one of the city lights and it made a noise so loud that the soldiers mistook it for a gunshot. The soldiers charge at the protestors, shooting and thrusting their bayonets, and the Gandhians flee with the coolies as someone hoists the flag of India. The soldiers begin massacring the protestors.

One of the protestors tells a soldier “do not fire on innocent men.” The soldiers laugh and ask if the Gandhians are loyal to the British Government, but they say they “know only one Government and that is the Government of the Mahatma.” The soldiers plant a Government flag and demand that the protestors march by it, but again the Gandhians start singing about “the flag of the Revolution.”

Boys rush at the flag and the soldiers stab them with bayonets, starting another chaotic massacre. Someone strikes one of the officers and Achakka hears Ratna’s voice saying, “no violence, in the name of the Mahatma” but cannot find her anywhere. “Men grip men and men crush men and men bite men and men tear men” in the confusion. Protestor after protestor falls dead, and the villagers cry out for them.

Achakka and the women “creep back through the village lane,” watching the police slaughter countless men beneath the Gandhian flag. To their relief, many of the villagers are standing at the town gate, but they wonder “who will ever set foot again in this village?” More wounded men return from the hill, bleeding and wailing.

Rachi declares that “in the name of the goddess, I’ll burn this village.” Against the others’ protests, she spits thrice toward the Bebbur Mound and the village gate before leading four others to make a bonfire of their clothing and spread the flames throughout their village. They hear gunshots and shrieking animals, and they run out of the village and through the Himavathy river as more and more of the protestors join them, heading toward Maddur.

In Maddur, more policemen immediately attack the Gandhians, but locals quickly rush to their rescue and tend to their wounded. The able-bodied continue over the Ghats and into the jungle, across into Mysore state, where people come and “hung garlands on our necks and called us the pilgrims of the Mahatma.” The people of this town, Kashipura, invite the Gandhians to stay, and they move there permanently.